


close the door in your heart and bury the key

by Thistlerose



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Canon Backstory, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:58:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thistlerose/pseuds/Thistlerose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sela killed her mother when she was only four years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	close the door in your heart and bury the key

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in 2011 with the intention of turning it into a longer character study of Sela. But it's been sitting in my back burner folder for nearly three years, so I don't think that's going to happen. I read it over last night and it felt complete to me. Maybe because I don't remember where I was going to go with this.

Sela killed her mother when she was four years old. 

She didn’t know what she was doing at the time; it was dark and she’d just been roused from a deep sleep. Until the cold night air struck her cheek and she looked up over her mother’s shoulder to see the door about to slide shut behind them, she thought that she was still dreaming. 

It would have been a believable dream. Sela’s mother always said she would take her away. Curled over Sela in her darkened bedroom, she would stroke the hair that was as pale as her own, and whisper, _I will take you away from here._ Her voice, when she said those words, was so very soft and gentle; most of the time, Sela’s mother’s voice was rough. But Sela was frightened, and in her nightmares her mother did try to wrench her - screaming, writhing - from the arms of her beloved father.

When she opened her eyes and saw the door closing, Sela didn’t think. She did what she always did in her dream. She screamed at the top of her lungs, flailing her arms and legs, and alerting her father’s guards.

Technically, they are the ones who killed Sela’s mother when they shot her with their disruptor rifles. Standing beside her father, Sela watched them do it. But in the second before the beams struck her and she disappeared forever, her mother looked her right in the face and Sela felt as if she had fired the shots herself. 

She didn’t cry then, or flinch. She didn’t look up, even though she knew that her father had glanced down at her and was gauging her reaction.

She simply stared straight ahead, at the spot where her mother, the human woman called Tasha Yar, had been. 

More than Sela’s mother died that morning. 

8/27/2011


End file.
